Wednesday 14 September 2011

Back on the IVF merry go around

Am I happy? Am I nervous? Am I trying to avoid thinking the worst? Well yes I think to all three. In February after many years of trying my husband and I had our first cycle of IVF. I'm 37 and he is 39. We have always wanted kids and planned on starting our family not long after we were married. But things just never happened and eventually after emigrating to Australia we decided to take the step of significant medical intervention. And it worked, first time, 7 eggs, 2 fertilised, one implanted and one pregnancy. It was amazing.

And then my new job went pear shaped. As part of a newly recruited team I found that I had to deliver all these programs after a restructuring had made the staff who delivered them all redundant, and finding new starters saying things like, "Yes I know I took the job, but I don't actually want to do it and am planning on taking the salary until my girlfriend finishes college and we can move somewhere else, but don't actually ask me to do anything as I just don't want to". I then get charges of bullying and harassment against me because I start managing the complete lack of output. And then I had a car accident, with some girl on a mobile phone deciding she wanted to put her car into my cars back seat. One ambulance trip later, a couple of scans over the next couple of days and that was the end of my pregnancy. Well, only after my care pathway completely failed adding more stress as my poor husband is phoning place after place trying to get me the basic care I needed. And what was works response? Well my boss decided I didn't need to replace the permanent staff member who had stormed off after deciding he was only going to talk to me with another member of staff present, I could cover that job as well. That made four including my own and then the administrator got hold of some e-mails about my miscarriage and decided to pass it around the office, and then they let her keep her job and expected me to work with her every day as, and I quote "well we hadn't thought of what she did as being bullying, I suppose you could see it that way, but we don't." So by now I was a wreck, not able to sleep, feeling so tired and stressed. I was also pregnant again, naturally, within two months of losing the last one. I sat there, at my obstetricians, on the first anniversary of my father’s death being told that we had achieved the impossible, a natural pregnancy, while also telling me that it looked like I was miscarrying again. So I went home, I cried, and the next day I walked into work and resigned.

So here I am ten weeks later, a couple of kilos lighter, daily gym fiend and trying to de-stress. This is my time to get as much of my life as calm and under control as possible, to find out the things I do want to do and don't want to do with my life, and to jump on to that IVF freight train again. All I can think about is that I've had my luck, we used it all up getting pregnant the very first time, or if we do get pregnant that everything I've done around health and well being will not be enough and that we will have another loss. But then I think, it could work, it could be fine and our little family could grow that bit bigger. It's the last thought that I am holding in my head and heart, it has to be.


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